OCR Text |
Show Holy cross trustee board balks lt at Kimball junction hospital lj by JANICE PERRY Record editor The national board of directors for Holy Cross Hospital, after two days of meetings, Tuesday voted to defer construction of a proposed 15- to 20-bed hospital at Kimball Junction, a hospital spokesman says. The 14-member board of the Holy Cross Health System parent organ- 5 ization of Holy Cross Hospital in Utah balked at approving construction construc-tion of the $4.7 million facility, partly due to the economy of the Park City and Summit County areas, said Mel Pyne, director of strategic planning for Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. The project in July was recommended recom-mended for approval locally by the board of trustees for the Salt Lake City-based Holy Cross Hospital. The facility would have included emergency emer-gency services, surgical units, a birthing unit, a sports medicine center and necessary support services. ser-vices. It was to have served all residents of Summit County and surrounding areas and would have provided care to skiers and other visitors to the Park City area. The national board met in Salt Lake City Monday and Tuesday, pondering the project, which, along with a medical office building, is part of the overall plan for the Landmark ondominiurrr xieveiopment!ab the junction of Highway 224 and Interstate 80. But Pyne said the board asked local hospital planners instead to devise a method to phase the facility into the area. Rather than building a full-blown hospital, "the board wants to move toward that direction with a more focused set of services, ' ' he said. ' But, Pyne said, the board did not define what those services would be. "They asked us to do that," he said. "The final decision to construct the Kimball Junction Hospital was deferred while we decide on this 'phased-in facility," he said, but promised to "accommodate the immediate needs of the community while containing the costs of the facility." He said an encouraging note is that the board delegated final approval of the project to its executive committee, which meets , more frequently than the full board. So, he said, local planners can work on their own timetable. The phased-in hospital could include facilities for short-stay surgery, emergency services, a birthing unit or a sports medicine center "in one combination or another," Pyle said. The economy of the Park City area was one of the issues discussed in the meetings, Pyle said. "It was one thefl reasons the board felt it ''needed-to phase into it," he said. "They're optimistic about the future, but the economy has caused some hesitancy." In earlier interviews, Holy Cross Hospital President Sister Margo Cain also said planning the Kimball Junction Hospital was a potentially risky undertaking because of the area's close proximity to several major hospitals in Salt Lake City. Unless the Kimball Junction Hospital Hos-pital was as technologically equipped as its counterparts along the Wasatch Front an expensive propositionmany prop-ositionmany people would not use it. Another consideration in the siting of a hospital at Kimball Junction is the demographics of the area, Cain said. She noted that Park City has a relatively young population. And what that means to medical providers is a lower rate of illness and therefore more empty hospital beds. Summit County Commissioner Tom Flinders said he was disappointed. disap-pointed. "I feel bad the area certainly needs a hospital," the commissioner said, and suggested the national board perhaps should have looked at the industrial growth potential for the county rather than the cyclical economy of Park City. "We have needed a hospital since the old Miners Hospital closed down A years ago," he said. ', . . Flinders also noted Summit j ' County as a whole has a need for a hospital closer than the Wasatch Front. "We have a lot of ambulance calls for cardiac arrests. You'd be surprised at the rate of cardiac arrests that die before they get to Salt Lake City," Flinders said. He said the county commission will "support and encourage" the Holy Cross hospital system to build a j hospital in Summit County. "We I would certainly do anything we can j as a commission to encourage them ! to build the hospital." j Park City Mayor Jack Green said the action did not surprise him. ' "Frankly, my reaction is that it is probably a very prudent thing to do. I I was on the committee (studying the hospital's potential development) ' and I coud not really get too enthusiastic about the size of the j hospital at Kimball Junction." Dr. Robert Winn, medical director of the Holy Cross Family Health and Emergency Center in Park City said j he was disappointed by the board's decision, but understood its reasons. "I am disappointed very much," , Winn said. "I was looking forward to J having a hospital close to Park City to service the needs of the community. "I understand the board's concerns con-cerns and I certainly hope they can , come up with some alternative that ' 1 would advance the medical capabilities capabil-ities in Summit County." ; , . , |